Tango, learning and energy by Susana Miller
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Lynn
Jul 2, 2011, 11:50:44 AM7/2/11
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Take a look at the response to Susana Miller's workshops in Chicago:
Below this article is Susana's schedule from July 7-13.
While we’re learning steps we slowly incorporate basic principles to do with balance, the ability to transfer or receive the message as an act of reflection, the subtle duration of a pause, the way to construct a musical phrase through the dance. These are the elements that make the dance and give it quality. The techniques and the fundamentals are easy to grasp intellectually, but the memory muscles require a different time frame. Constant practice based on a solid formation is the shortest path to dancing well.
How have we locals come to dance tango with this characteristic porteño flavour? The young generations learn and grow upon the time through presence, body language and sharing the same milieu. Tango, like nearly all the artistic and popular products of a culture, comprises a tradition that is handed down. Curiosity, observation, permanence and coexistence with the elderly of the tribe serve to inspire younger generations. The language and the culture of the street, the customs and ways of expressing sentiment, change with time. And the way we learn as well. The teaching left by the great dancers who learned 30 or 40 years ago is still valid in itself, but it would be impossible to replicate the way they learned in their time. The slow pace, its profile within neighborhood life, a different ethical code between the sexes, created the conditions for a way to learn. Consumerism, the immediacy that characterizes today’s culture, does not create the same conditions. The neighborhood street corners, the radio, the bar have been transformed into anonymous street corners, Internet and happy hour. The Academy has replaced the patio of old, where you learned to dance with your aunt or your sister or following a friend who already knew the steps. You learned playing, almost by instinct, there was no comradeship with women in the Academy, the men didn’t learn with them, and thus avoided the stress produced by the presence of the opposite sex, when men end up wanting to impress the women.
The challenge is to rethink the teaching methods we use today in order to get as close as possible to those traditional, nonprofessional methods that worked so well in their time. The structure today is a one-and-a-half-hour class of 20 or 30 or more people, in which students learn with people who know only as much as they themselves. These classes have a great usefulness: you learn steps, technique, musicality. But men should complement the classes simultaneously with a more direct experience, replicating the natural feminine methodology, following those who know how to lead, the milongueros and the teachers, and use this body-to-body experience as a regular, irreplaceable learning method. A good dancer after all, when they understand their role, leads and follows. The woman who has learned to follow has a deeply intuitive understanding of the role of the man. She has danced hundreds of tangos, just as she has followed hundreds of dancers. The man has as his reference point only one dance, his own – he dances only his own dance, and the woman follows. The woman receives more immediate and complete information than the man in the body-to-body experience. For this reason, you don’t often see a woman leading without the proper language or out of time with the music. She has, through her experience as a follower, a physical and emotional perspective of what is good dancing within the role of the man. The body learns with the years, it converts itself into a technical instrument, it learns what is pleasant for oneself and for one’s partner, the music becomes a full-body experience, not just sound.
The way to accelerate this natural process is to experience these sensations from the opposite role. And in addition to use the dance floor, because the Buenos Aires dance floor teaches; the crowded floors oblige us to circulate using certain codes, to support the body’s weight in the right places in order not to lose balance, etc. Teaching outside of Buenos Aires still implies a great challenge. The dance floors don’t teach, the traditional milieu is not replicated, the old magicians are not present.
Europeans came to tango through the show "Tango Argentino" and this is the tango that returned in the “revival” of the 80s and that seduces a new generation of Argentines who would have been rock’n’rollers, and who thought until then of tango as a dance for the elderly that was disappearing. Antonio Todaro was the first maestro to teach in Europe. He was a super choreographer, he had taught the very best stage dancers choreographies that were striking and new. He didn’t teach people to dance, he taught those who were already dancers, choreographies for the stage. Someone who followed in his footsteps was the great Pepito Avellaneda. He and many after him followed this pedagogical tradition, continuing to use the classic form of collective workshops.
Overseas, the best dancers are generally the teachers: they organize classes by the maestros they admire in order to have better access to them; they spend many hours in private lessons and learning this source of energy that is the body-to-body, an experience many of them repeat for years. To train yourself using direct sensations and intuition is, although in a different context, the closest to dancing in the patio with your aunt or your friends.
SUSANA MILLER WILL BE TEACHING IN LOS ANGELES JULY 7-13.
Thursday, July 7 - Caltech's Winnett Hall Lounge
8:00-9:30 - Quality of embrace, balance and posture: Use the body well, and everything else will follow.
9:30-11:00 - Turns and counter turns in the baldosa: Turns are the fountain of versatility in the pursuit of tango happiness.
Caltech Students w/ID: $5/per class
Affilliates & Other Full-Time Students w/ID: $10/one; $15/two
Non-Student/Affiliate: $20/one; $35/two
Friday, July 8 - The Sonata Room - 210 N. First Avenue, Arcadia 91006, 626-286-0373
8:00-9:00 - The Body is the Instrument of the Dance: Posture, relxation,rhythm and walking.
Balance foundations How to avoid pain. (All Levels)
9:00-1:00 - MILONGA SONATA
10:30 - EXHIBITION
Class & Milonga: $25.00
Milonga Only (arriving after 9:00): $10.00
Saturday afternoon, July 9 - Blackbird Dance Co. Studios -
2:00-3:30 - Building the Story: The steps are the words with which you build the story, from the alluring opening line to the satisfaction of an interesting finale.
2:00-3:30 - Building the Story: The steps are the words with which you build the story, from the alluring opening line to the satisfaction of an interesting finale.
$20
Sunday afternoon, July 10 - The Sonata Room - 210 N. First Avenue, Arcadia 91006, 626-286-0373
2:00-3:15 - Steps are the Instruments of the Music and Navigation. Three Basic Milonguero steps. Turns, Back Ochos the Milonguero Way
3:30-4:45 - Waltz: the rhythm, Sensual Walking, Turn and Counter Turn with Sacadas
(Intermediate/Advanced)
One class: $15; Two classes: $25; Three classes: $30
Monday, July 11 - Santa Monica Bay Women's Club - 1210 Fourth Street, Santa Monica 90401
8:30-9:30 - Walking milonga: A traspie here and there. How to go from traspie to walking.
9:30-1:00 - DIVO MILONGA
Class & Milonga: $25
Milonga Only (arriving after 9:30) : $12
8:30-9:30 - Walking milonga: A traspie here and there. How to go from traspie to walking.
9:30-1:00 - DIVO MILONGA
Class & Milonga: $25
Milonga Only (arriving after 9:30) : $12
8:00-9:00 - Milonguero Style Tango
Class: $20; Class & Practica: $25; Practica (arriving after 9:00): $7
Private lessons with Susana available at the Casa de Practica
506 N. Fuller Avenue, Los Angeles 90036 - (323) 939-6907
$100/hour
To schedule a private lesson: casadep...@pacbell.net
For More Information: www.casadepractica.com, casadep...@pacbell.net
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